Secret Words
Certain words relating to the Eucharist were communicated by Christ to Joseph of Arimathea and were committed orally from keeper to keeper of the Graal. In Robert de Borron's metrical romance, material power is added to their spiritual efficacy and whoever could acquire and retain them, had a mysterious power over all around him, could not suffer by evil judgments, could not suffer deprivation of his own rights, need not fear the result of battle, provided his cause were good. The words were the secret of the Graal and were either incommunicable in writing or were written only in the Book of the Graal which, de Borron implies, was itself written by Joseph of Arimathea. These words are the chief mystery of the Lesser Holy Graal, as the prose version of de Borron's poem is called. They were most probably a form of eucharistic consecration, and there is evidence that the Celtic church, following the example of the Eastern Church used them in addition to the usual consecration as practised in the Latin Church, which is merely a repetition of the New Testament account of the Lord's Supper. The separate clause they are supposed to have formed is called Epiclesis and consisted of an invocation of the Holy Ghost.